That old porch is feeling more and more like home

WINEDALE – For the first time in several weeks, I’m reporting from the front porch of the old country house in Washington County, and my feet hurt.

So do my knees and elbows and just about everything else, and I don’t intend to move my bones from this chair until the sun goes down and the beans get done.

As I may have mentioned the last time we talked, a couple of months ago we moved all the furniture out of this old house so the carpenters could patch it and the painters could paint it and the plumbers could plumb it.

That work has been done now, or almost, so everything that we took out of the place has got to be put back in, and that’s what’s the matter with me.

I believe that moving, in or out, is the most tiring labor I’ve ever suffered. Even if you’ve got pro movers doing the heavy lifting, there’s a quadjillion jobs left to do.

Things to lug in and put up. Lost things to locate. Broken things to fix. Wrapped things to unwrap. Dropped things to pick up. Useless things to throw out. Things to hang, sort, shove, dust, wash, fold, and then try to fix something for supper that’ll go well without salt because you’ve lost the shaker.

But I’m pleased to be collapsed here on the front porch after such a long absence. This spot is feeling more and more like home.

Do you hear that high-pitched scream? That’s one of our resident hawks.

Every day one of those ill-tempered birds circles over us, sees that it doesn’t like what’s going on, and expresses dissatisfaction by sending down a piercing scream. I’ve never met a hawk of any kind that was in a good humor.

That scream is among my earliest sound recollections. It causes me to hear a country woman calling, “Oh John! Get the shotgun! Hawk’s after the chickens!”

If you could really hear what I’m hearing, you’d wonder about the great roar that lasted 10 seconds just now, and overcame the hawk’s scream and every other normal country sound. That great noise was made by another species of our wildlife hereabouts.

I think of him as the four-wheeled racer. He drives a heavy pickup and comes along our little country road at speeds appropriate to an interstate highway. He treats our ears to a thundering noise and leaves behind a heavy cloud of dust.

A few motorists seem to feel that a country dirt road, not carrying much traffic, is a safe place to run fast. This is just not so.

Our road is narrow. When vehicles meet, both drivers need to slow down and pull over to make room for safe passage, so it’s not made for speed.

Country roads often have sharp blind turns and they can be dangerous. We have two such 90-degree turns near this old house. You better get off the gas when you approach one of those babies because you may get a vehicle right up in your face before you know there’s another car within a mile of you.

While we’re on sounds (I’ve got my new hearing aids now and all sounds are of special interest to me), I wish you would notice that quiet hum coming from the kitchen. That’s our new automatic dish washer.

I don’t know who she was, but a country woman more than a century ago stood in this house and washed her dishes in a pan using lye soap, and I would love to hear what she thinks of this new machine.

She might think even more, as I do, of the new washer and dryer which are silent right now but will be humming again pretty soon. We’ve never had a washing machine here in the country, and now that we do, we look for excuses to run the thing.

When we first got this place I’d stay here alone for extended periods and to avoid doing laundry by hand I’d keep wearing the same jeans until they stood upright in the corner at night and attracted fire ants.

But after all these improvements to the old place, I’m gunning for the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Every time I walk in the new laundry room, I’m apt to take off my jeans and pitch ’em in the washer.

That machine gives off a gentle noise that blends well with the croaking of the frogs down on the creek.

51 Responses

Country porch sitting. Just imagine that in this day and time we can take time to do such a thing. I find my efforts at this pastime require a certain amount of mental conditioning. Somewhat of a concentrated effort to keep me in one place for more than just a few minutes. It’s like I’m still in high gear and can’t slow down. Perhaps more like that pickup driver out on the dirt road, it’s tough to slow down. What’s wrong with this picture? Maybe I need more practice.

Mr. Hale, I’m guessing you had to put one of those new, environmentally friendly septic systems in after adding all those water-using appliances. Is that the case? I don’t think they let people put in the old tile field types anymore do they?

It’s good to hear that you enjoy the sounds of new appliances. I have washed many a dish (and clothes) by hand. Love to hear the dish washer and the washing machine and dryer. My hand appreciate them too.

I am a 31 year-old who recently bought a 1940 Heights-style house right off Main Street in Tomball. Front porch sitting is quite different here, but no less enjoyable. It is louder, but I think more entertaining due to the amount of people that pass by within a block or two. I also enjoy the hawks as well. There are two pairs that regularly hunt from my backyard bird feeder and front yard crawdads.

I’m sitting on my front porch looking at the stump of a hickory tree 20 feet away. I dropped the tree yesterday and the trunk is still weeping. It’s tears have overflowed the top of the stump and has covered the bark with wetness. It’s death will allow new life for 7 Japanese boxwoods and a Mexican lime tree.

When the house was built in 92, the top of the hickory died but the tree persisted and lived. It satisfied my taste for hickory nuts and kept the squirrels fed.

A family of flying squirrels moved in the tree in 95 and kept my two sons entertained when they were children.

And now it’s wood will flavor the meat that will be smoked or grilled on the pit.

I agree with what you mentioned about moving. My wife and I moved 3 times since getting hitched in 1969. First to an apartment, 9 months later to our first house and 15 years later to our present home. On our last move we paid a moving company (3 or 4 brothers) to move our furniture and a set number of boxes. Included was a baby grand piano that we paid to have moved to the second story. After all our bedroom furniture was in the master bedroom, we still had a whole lot of space so we decided to have the piano put there. When I told those guys that we decided to put the piano in the master bedroom rather than upstairs, I thought thery were going to kiss me. We rented a bob tail truck and made many a load moving the rest ourselves.

I knew a guy who’s phiosophy on life hinged on living for the moment, spending whatever money he had on hand, and never owning more stuff than he could fit into the trunk and back seat of his car (one trip). Even though he made a ton of money, he met those goals. Maybe he was right.

My 3 sons always liked to live on the upper story of every apartment they ever lived in and they seemed to move every year when they were in college. Those 3 story apartments w/o freight elevators are killers. I finally told each of them I was not moving them again. Of course, I ended up doing so anyway most of the time.

As to washing clothes, my mother used to have a washboad for working on stubborn stains. She used it for years, even after having an automatic washing machine. I wonder if they still are availble in the U.S.? Mom was the first person I know to use a low suds detergent. She used All brand, which I think was the only low suds detergent available in the early fifties. Most of the women in her family and in the community thought he was “nuts” because they equated suds with clean. She also used Mrs. Stewarts blueing for white things. I bet that is hard to find as well. In a pinch, Dad use blueing for treating pink eye in cattle. Because no one else around used low suds detergents, Mom got All by special order. It came in a large, heavy cardboard drum. I think All was made by Montsano before being sold to Lever Brothers.

I was wondering where this column went, having seen it in the Sunday “real paper” section. My mother’s parents had a wonderful porch for sitting in Jackson’s Gap, Alabama, close to Dadeville and Opelika, otherwise known as Auburn Tiger territory. I would also crawl under the porch and “stir the dir” and call out “doodlebug doodlebug your house is on fire” and some other nonsense.

I was born and raised in Brenham and roared down many of those dirt roads in Washington and Austin counties in my dumb youth. You are absolutely correct about the dangers of speeding down those narrow dirt roads!

Front porch settin’ is becoming a lost art. My neighbors across the street are still hold outs and will use the porch just about every evening, afre doing their gardening all day, since the warmer weather has arrived. We go over, occasionally to help them salute their ancestors from Scotland, with a little more ice, thank you and enjoy his front porch. We seem to be getting away from the front since we built the the stone

back “veranda”. Last year, we had a sort of pot luck B-B-Q for all the neighbors, we provided the beans, beer and B-B-Q and they brought chairs, desserts and what ever else they wanted to. It proved a little too constricting because we divided into two camps, women inside gossipping and men outside telling interesting and funny tall tales. Last sunday, we repeated the get together, same crowd but on the garage concrete apron this time. It was large enough for all, and the spill over could dine on the grass if they so wished. The same thing happened though, the women clumped together on the grass and we men were on the concrete discussing projects on our little homes or future trips we may take if the price of gasline goes down. As to the laundry, thats in the garage, thats as far as I was gonna wrestle those two machine when we made them move a few years back so the only washer in the house is for the dishes, and it’s one quiet machine, the only sound you can hear is the low swish of the water as it scrubs the dishes. Ain’t space technology wunnerful? ;o)

Be thankful that you aren’t haveing to use the old type of wringer washer. You had to have a drain pipe to empty the dirty water outside, and a water hose to fill it back up for the next load, then you had to have 2 of those big washtubs on legs, so you could run clothes thru the wringer for the first rinse, then swing the wringer around and run them thru again for the final rinse, and heaven help if you got your fingers caught in the wringers. Then hang the clothes out on the clothes line and watch the skies for rain. The best part of all that was the sunshine smell of the sheets to put you to sleep at night. Whoever invented automatic washers and dishwashers deserves the Academy Award.

Oh Dave , so sorry you had to chop the old tree down , how sad . As to the wash boards , I can remember using one of those in our bathtub when the wringer washing machine would break down . My 1st washing machine we had when we moved back here to Libya was a Korean thing that was sorta like a wringer and we had to use the same method to fill the thing up or drain it as Joy described in her post . Thankfully we now have a fully automatic ! Yeah , life made too easy , lol !!!!

I sorely miss the hawks flying in pairs over the rice fields looking for prey .In the fall geese flying over the house honking .Libya has a dreath of wild birds . When we moved back in 1990 there was hardly any wild birds to be seen at all.Now they are slowly making come back .

Chickens…. well I have a thing about them and all the racket they can make , not to mention the mess .They have a saying here … if you hear a rooster crow , you know he is crowing because he saw a angel . Chickens are welcomed on all farms here because they will kill and eat scorpions .Sorta gives me new prospective on chickens . I made Moe promise me that when we get around to building our house that I will have a porch with a couple of rocking chairs to sit and watch the sunsets from . Spent so many wonderful hours rocking on front porches when I was growing up ,I hope to be able to pass that onto my grandson .

Ralph W. – Blueing is not hard to find. Most supermarkets stock it. I bought some not long ago.

Jeffrey – Right,we put in an aerobic septic system at the old Winedale place. You’re supposed to get a permit from the federal government to put in any kind of system. I had a little house one time up in Booger County and a plumber built me a septic system out of two oil drums hooked together and it worked great.

At least up until two years ago an aerobic system wasn’t necessary if you live outside an incorporated town and on at least ten acres. My system is merely two 500 gallon concrete tanks, first the effluent goes into one tank and then spills over into the second one. From there it goes out through two field lines and into the pasture. I had our septic system installed in 2003 and this year I have to get it cleaned out but that’s it.

My Ging-Ging, born in Clarendon, TX had that happened to her on her wringer washer many years ago. My mom told us girls to never mention it so we didn’t but sometimes would “mock” a half index finger Ging had just to get a giggle with each other. That never stopped Ging from sewing beautifully and making the best Texas food around!

Sorry Leon, off topic but wondered if I would ever get a chance to talk about the “missing finger.” :o)

Well now, this has nothing to do with anything except that its coming from the front porch…..and so here is the Post Oak Point spring bird report:

The Snow Geese are finally gone except for a few of the sick, lame and lazy. Some of them are flying 3500 miles to their ancestral nesting grounds high above the Arctic Circle; Their scientific name means ” White Waves From Beyond The North Wind”. There must have been some poets among the early Ornithologists.

I found a Great Horned Owl nest last week, high in the top of big White Ash Tree The owls had done wee bit of repair to an old Red-tailed Hawk nest. There are two young ones.

A pair of Black Vultures have two fuzzy uglies in the kitchen cabinet in the tumble-down husk of an old house just north of the matchbook pasture. Did you ever notice how a house just sort of gives up and falls apart when their folks move away?

There were seven Bartramia longicauda in the high hay meadows yesterday morning. We grew up calling them Prairie Plover . Daddy Wouldn’t let us shoot them. He said they had already had more shootin’ than they could stand. The A.O.U. decides what to name the birds of North America and they call them Upland Sandpipers. I think I’ll just keep on calling them Prairie Plover.

The Carolina Wrens, Chickadees, and Titmice are feeding big clutches of youngsters, the Bluebirds are actin’ broody, Cardinals are building nests and the Barn Swallows are packing mud. The Purple Martin roosters have been here for a while and my Lady saw Scissor-tails three days ago. Young Crows have just hatched. There is no sign of the Chimney Swifts so there is still a remote chance that we might get a late frost.

Leon-So glad you all are able to enjoy the country place even more with all the remodeling complete and all the modern conveniences in place. Know it’s going to be great!

The moving back and forth isn’t fun though. I’m still opening boxes from our move and can’t seem to find some things I thought we had. There’ll be a citywide garage coming up so will try to dispose of some cast offs then and take more to a thrift store.

Mrs. Stewart’s Blueing is great. I used it to rinse cut glass and fine crystal to make it sparkle.

John G – I do know how Robertson County came to be called Booger County. Long story, though. Next time you’re near a library pick up a little book titled “Turn South at the Second Bridge.” The Booger story is in that book, told to me by one Ben Myatt back in the ’50s.

H Town Mom – Clarendon, Texas. Haven’t seen that town name in a sentence in lo these many. My mother, before she married, taught school in Clarendon, back in 1909 or 10.

Leon: I’ve read “Turn South ….”, but it was probably 35 or 40 years ago and I don’t remember the Booger County story. My copy of that book got away from me years ago when I was more careless about my book loaning practices. In more recent years I have tightened up a lot as I have come to realize what a treasure my books are. Nowadays I take a child, grandchild, favorite pet, or bottle of good whiskey and hold ’em as security for return of the book. But no matter, I have a nephew who has a copy of “Turn South …” (he got you to sign it for him at a book signing you had at the Round Top Library a few years ago). I’ll borrow his and re-read it. Maybe he will forget who he loaned it to.

My nephew bought a copy of “Old Friends” and I bought “Supper Time” at that book signing and then we went over to the town square where the Chili Cookoff was going on. It was February and a cloudy, windy, misting day and the temperature was about 35 degrees. We got so cold that not even the hottest 4-alarm chili would warm us. It was a good thing we went to the book signing first.

JOY # 2: One of my grandmothers had a very old Maytag washer. It had two wooden tubs and a swing around wringer. It was powered by an electric motor with a fan belt drive. There was nothing in place to keep you from getting caught in the fan belt. Dad said that the washer was originally powered by a gasoline engine.

About 25 years ago, we were walking to a resturant in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. We walked past an appliance store. There were about a dozen wringer washers in sight and one or two automatics. (Many homes on Cape Breton Island did not have running water.) I asked my 12 year old if he knew what those machines were. Finally, he said, “If you own a car wash place, you use them to squeeze out your chamois”.

Front porch sitting is a lost art. I remember sitting on my grandparents porch in the evenings after the plowing[by mule] and planting and hoeing and chopping and milking and supper were over and just being mesmerized by the stories of days gone by. I remember the preacher and his wife stopping by and she chose that time to nurse their baby. Pretty heady stuff for an 11 year old back in 1948. Now my grandkids visit us and can’t seem to tear themselves away from the tv and their video games. Can’t force them to sit with me, but if they did, I would be glad to pass some history on. Maybe, one day.

Hi Leon. Sometimes it is a small world! Ging was also a teacher in Clarendon. She taught in a one-room school house (my mom’s words) in about 1923. Grandpa came from Hedley to court her (again my mom’s words.)

WHILE YOU ALL ARE COUNTING BIRDS, I AM COUNTING CHICKENS. I JUST GOT THIS SPRINGS MURRAY McMURRAY GAGY CHICK CATALOGE. OUT OF IOWA. (800) 456-3280 THESE FOLKS HAVE BEEN SELLING BABY CHICKS FOR OVER 91 YEARS.

MY DADDY HAD BEEN GETTING THEIR CATALOGS SINCE BEFORE I WAS BORN. AND I STILL GET ONE EVERY SPRING. MAYBE SOME DAY I WILL BREAK DOWN A ORDER A FEW HUNDRED MORE CHICKS LIKE I DID IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS.

THEY GOT MORE DIFFERENT KINDS OF CHICKENS THAN ANY BODY I KNOW OF. SOME OR REALLY FANCY LOOKING. I JUST SAT DOWN A COUNTED THEM AND THEY ARE A FEW OVER 110 KINDS. AND THEN THERE IS OVER 60 KINDS OF DUCKS, GEESE, TURKEYS, QUAUL, PARTRIDGE, PHEASANT, PEACOCKS, AND QUINEAS.

SINCE THEY DON’T SHIP LESS THEN TEN OF EACH KIND, IT WOULD COST WELL OVER $3,500 TO GET A FEW OF EACH KIND. SOME OF THE PEACOCKS ARE OVER $75 EACH.

AND THEY SELL A HENHOUSE FOR TEN CHICKENS FOR ONLY $1,300 THAT YOU CAN PUT TOGETHER YOUR SELF IF YOU ARE IN A HURRY TO START RAISING YOUR OWN FLOCK.

SO ORDER YOURSELF A CATALOG AND GET INTO BUSINESS AND SAVE MOENY ON EGGS.

Well now, Post Oak Point Community is about halfway between New Ulm and Industry in Austin Co. It sits at the confluence of three year- round spring-fed creeks that form Post Oak Point Creek.

According to the archeological record it was first settled by Paleoindian mastodon hunters around 9000 BC. German settlers came in 1850 and by the early 1900’s there was a store, saloon, dancehall, livery stable, cotton gin, a blacksmith, a school, a church , a post office and about 100 people.

Most of it burned down in 1926 and it never recovered. We have grown rather partial to its unrecovered state.

Booger County isn’t unique to Texas, BTW. Google shows Booger counties in both Arkansas and Missouri. There are a number of stories telling how these counties got the nickname. Some of the tales even make sense.

We don’t have a front porch but we do have a back porch and it faces West, beautiful sunsets over our view of Jackson Creek. We sit out there in our rocking chairs with a nice cold beer and watch the sun go down with an occasional deer running across the pasture.

By the way, we caught a skunk in our trap last night and are trying to decide how to get rid of it. No one wants to go near the darn thing. I am glad to have it out from under my house as it was causing quite a stink for the past couple of weeks. Any one on here have any suggestions? There is no wild animal rescue here in Washington County. Guess I’m just going to have to muscle up and shoot the critter. Sure don’t want to leave it there to starve to death. Critters are the only thing that I hate to have to deal with out here. Too soft hearted, I guess.

By the way, we caught a skunk in our trap last night and are trying to decide how to get rid of it. No one wants to go near the darn thing.

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;o) I’ll tell you how my neighbor handled the same situation. He took a big sheet of transparent vizqueen or rock shield or what ever you call that plastic sheet that resembles a tarp. He held it up like a big shield and layed it over the trap. He was able to drag the thing a good distance away got the trap unlatched and retired from the area rapidly. He didn’t smell very good for a while too.

We moved to the country, not too far from your country place, about 20 years ago after we both retired from HISD. We love it and have a front porch and sit out there often and watch a car now and then go by. It is quiet except for the singing of the birds settling down at night. What moving here has done for us is immeasurable. The quiet, except for sounds of nature, is wonderful. Living close to Houston keeps us in touch with whatever we desire to see or do.

I’d like to order a batch of chicks from Murray McMurray myself. Nothing beats the quality of true “yard eggs.” When I was a teenager, I had a job working for a dentist in Baytown. I did everything from mowing grass to helping cast dentures. He had a flock of chickens – Barred Rocks, Production Reds, Buff Orpingtons, etc. Those chickens got to scratch around the base of trees and eat bugs they way that chickens are supposed to. The yolks from those eggs were so rich that they were orange in color, not the pale, pallid yellow that you see in supermarket eggs. I do like the fact that most supermarkets are offering more eggs from “cage-free” hens.

HAVING GROWN UP ON A WEST TEXAS CATTLE RANCH, SKUNKS WERE A VERY COMMON PART OF LIFE. NOT AS COMMON AS RATTLESNAKES, BUT SEVERAL TIMES A YEAR THE DOGS WOULD “FIND” ONE OUT AT THE BARNS WHERE THE CHICKENS HAD FREE RUN OF THINGS. I GUESS THE SKUNK WAS LOOKING FOR AN EGG BREAKFAST.

AND MOTHER OR DADDY WOULD KILL THEM AS QUICK AS POSSIBLE BEFORE THE DOGS GOT “PERFUMED” AND STUNK UP THE WHOLD PLACE. IF THE DOGS GOT AHOLD OF THE SKUNK, AND IT GOT THEM, WE USED VINIGAR TO KILL THE SMELL. I DO NOT REMEMBER THE VINIGAR WORKING MUCH BETTER THAN WATER BUT THERE WAS NOT ANYTHING ELSE.

MY ADVICE IS SHOOT THE THING AND GET IT OVER WITH. WILD CRITTERS ARE A FACT OF LIFE. JUST BE THANKFUL YOU ARE NOT OVER RUN WITH RATTLESNAKES. I HAD A RELITAVE THAT CAUGHT THEM BOOGERS FOR THE BOUNTY THE COUNTY PAID, AND ONE YEAR HE WAS PAID FOR ALMOST 10,000 LIVE SNAKWS WHICH HE THEN SOLD TO SOME SNAKE DEALER. SO WE DID HAVE TO DEAL WITH THEM PRETTY OFTEN DAY AND NIGHT.

I HAVE BEEN BITTEN BY A “COPPERHEAD” AND THAT IS BAD ENOUGH SNAKE BITE FOR ME. I STILL HAVE A COPY OF THE HOSPITAL BILL TACKED TO THE WALL, IT WAS ONLY $18,313.96!

I CAUGHT MISTER COPPERHEAD, AND HE MADE A BETTER HAT BAND FOR MY COWBOY HAT, THAN HE MADE FOR A SNAKE. I ALSO HAVE A RATTLE OFF THE REAR END OF A RATTLESNAKE THAT IS 4 INCHES LONG AND 15/16th OF AN INCH WIDE. SEEMS LIKE THEM THERE WILD CAT HUZZIES LIKE A MAN THAT HAVE THAT SORT OF THING ON THEIR HAT! KIND OF LIKE A MAN WITH A FISH HOOK IN HIS EAR!

ME — I LIKE A SOLID SILVER BAND OF INDIAD DO-DADS TO SET OFF THE BELLS WHEN I GO THROUGH THE AIA PORT SCREENING GATE.

I KNOW THAT YOU CAN TAKE A SIMPLE CREDIT CARD AND SLICE A PERSON’S THROAT WITH IT, I WONDER HOW LONG IT WILL BE BEFORE THE “FOOLS” AT THE AIRPOST WILL BE TRYING TO TAKE THEM AWAY FROM EVERY BODY?

I have a good size front porch on my Heights home. That is the main reason I bought this 90 year old house 930 sq ft house. I have cats and dogs, birds, and currently a rooster lives in the house behind me. My cousins in Medina have roosters and chickens too. They had seven chicks hatch over Easter weekend when I was there. I may go up soon and get a couple. First I have to build a decent coop. Anyone out there have a decent but cheap coop they want to give up?

I love love love sitting on my front porch or laying on my front porch swing. It has become my favorite pastime.

LH and OC: The old house where I grew up in West Texas had a wide covered wooden porch across the front and one side. My Dad called it the “gallery”. His favorite spot in the evening, when weather permitted was in a rocking chair at the corner with his feet propped up on the column holding the ceiling up. We could crawl under the house since it had no siding. I remember when we were 6 or 7 my brother and a friend crawled under the house. My brother leaned against one of the rock supports and the friend happened to see a rattle snake lying on the ledge above his head. They got out fast. When my Dad got home he crawled under the house and shot the snake with his 12 guage shotgun. As I remember the snake was 4 or 5 feet long. He saved the rattler but I don’t know whatever happened to it. We didn’t go under the house very often after that.

bjdav: I would follow the advice from OLD COWBOY. Skunks, like bats, can carry rabies and not show symptoms. My guess is that over half are carriers. You are doing everybody, including other animals, a favor if you kill the skunk. I have shot many & I favor a shotgun because I only had one spray after being shot by a shotgun. With a 22, he is likely to spray but since he is in a cage, I’d probably use a 22. Like OC says, stay upwind. Remember if you get sprayed, you need to have rabies shots. So whatever you do, be careful.

Levi: I have a friend that has caught many skunks (7 as of 2 years ago) in one of those Have-A-Heart traps. He lives in almost the center of Jersey Village. He uses a very heavy black plastic tarp to get to the trap because he cannot shoot the skunk here un JV. The tarp is huge so he doubles it up a couple of times and holds it with his hands held far apart and over his head. He walks up slowely and puts the tarp over the trap, wraps it up and puts it in the bed of his pick-up. He takes it to a wooded area away from homes. He says that he has never had one spray while doing this operation. The fact that he is very tall, I think 6 ft. 7, allows him to create a big shield with the tarp. (I am going on record that I would NEVER try this with a skunk.)

Do they allow chickens in the Heights? I had a coop I built from cedar posts with chicken wire wrapped around the posts. A coon dug under it and ate some of the chickens. I buried a sheet of tin under each side of the coop and nailed it to the cedar post under the ground. That coon would dig a hole about 8 inches deep every night in the same place and hit tin. I would fill the hole in every morning. Finally he moved over a couple of feet and dug again and hit tin again. He gave up after a couple of weeks. I bet he sported the shortest claws in East Texas.

No doubt porch setting is becoming a lost art. Those of us fortunate enough to have grown up with family who had houses with big porches will soon be a footnote in America’s history. The Mrs. and I bought a house in Amarillo when I retired a couple of years ago. We had a wonderful space to add a screened in porch. Neighbors across the alley live on a large family compound of at least four homes (maybe five), while it is fenced it is like a park with all types of trees, shrubs, etc. Beautiful scene from the back porch over our own fence. Lots of birds, etc. And to top it off, they have chickens. I understand that the deceased father of the clan bought the land years ago and the chickens have been grandfathered into the city code because they predated the code. Nothing like the sound of a rooster crowing to take me back in memory to the childhood farm. Leon, the only negative about porch setting is that lazy feeling lasts too long to get everything done I need to do. But as the neighbor says, why retire if you can’t put off until tomorrow what you don’t want to do today.

Thanks for reminding us to take time to smell the roses and listen to the roosters, etc.

I KNOW THAT YOU CAN TAKE A SIMPLE CREDIT CARD AND SLICE A PERSON’S THROAT WITH IT, I WONDER HOW LONG IT WILL BE BEFORE THE “FOOLS” AT THE AIRPOST WILL BE TRYING TO TAKE THEM AWAY FROM EVERY BODY?

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Wow OC! You remind me of one of the Heros in a spy thriller written by Trevanian. That spy, I don’t recall his name, said that he knew 14 ways of killing a man with an 8 1/2″x 11″ sheet of paper…..now thats a lethal weapon!

I don’t have a front porch. But my grandparents always had lawn chairs in their front yard. 5 to be exact in case company came over.The old metal kind that kind of rocked when you sat in them. They would wave at every car that went past their house. They lived in that house for 67 years and in my grandfather’s obit, it stated “the gentleman who lived on Howard Street who always waved at you” People immediately knew who it was and told wonderful stories about him and how it made them feel that they could count on him being there and waving at them. I’v been thinking about that lately, so I went this week and bought 3 lawn chairs, just so I can sit out there all day and wave at the cars that go by.

I’d love to remembered the same as my grandfather was. Just waving “Hi”

Going back to washing machines. Bill and I married while we were still in college. We lived in college housing for married students at San Marcos. His parents lived in Lockhart, and his mother offered us the use of her wringer washer on Saturdays. Bill thought it would be too much trouble to take the laundry over there every week, so we washed clothes in our kitchen sink for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t wring them dry enough, so he had to do that. Pretty soon he thought his mother’s offer was a good one!

After we bought a house, we had our own wringer washer for a time. Then we “graduated” to an automatic, and for several weeks we would just open the lid, watch it agitate and spin, and marvel at modern conveniences.

When I was a very young lad, I went with my Dad to dig out a skunk den. It was on our farm located in southeast Oho and it was during the drough and bad economic times of the early 30’s. Trapping and catching fur animals for cash was a source of income for many in that area. Now back to the story about digging out the skunks.

Usually several skunks were in the den so it was pretty good money, especially if you go a number 1 skunk, completly black on with maybe a white spot on his forehead. A number 4 was mostly white with broad strips down his back. The money paid for the pelts was based on the number between 1 and 4. The den Dad was digging out was not very deep, so it didn’t take long to reach where the skunks were staying. Now skunks have the unusual behavior of coming out of the den one at a time with some space beteen each one. As soon as one of the skunks stuck his head out, Dad gave at hard swat with the back of the shovel that killed it almost instantly. He tossed it with the shovel and waited for the next one to appear. This process went on for several minutes with a total of four skunks in hand. So no stink of any kind. We carried the skunks by their tails back to the barn where he skined them and placed their pelts on drying boards with the fur side inside towards the board surface. All of this and not one notice of skunk smell.

You may also know that a skunk can’t spray unless it has it’s feet on a solid surface. If you get the critter off the ground quickly and keep its feet off a solid surface, it can’t hit you with with it deadly spray. I have seen that done many times. In fact, the skunk can be put into a gunney sack, and it will not spray while in the sack, if you keep it off the ground.

One time a friend and I were running my trap line when we came to a hole with one of my traps obviously with something caught, but had pulled he trap into the hole. My friend was anxious to see what was in the trap, so he got down an looked into the hole only to be met with skunk spray directly into his face and eyes. Now that is not an experience you want to have happen to you. It was March and a small creek was close to the hole where my friend went to try to get the stuff off his face and out of his eyes. Unfotunately, the water didn’t help much and it was very cold. One thing we learned from this event, never look into a hole unless you know what’s in there.

GEE WHIZ, I ONLY KNOW NINE WAYS WITH A SHEET OF PAPER, AND IT HAS TO BE A CLEAN SHEET WITH ON HOLES IN IT!

BUT AS AN EXPERANCED WEST TEXAS COWBOY I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT A 30.06 WITH A 18 POWER RANGE FINDING SCOPE WORKS BETTER WITH LESS RISK OF MESSING UP YOUR CLOTHES. MY MOTHER JUST HATED FOR ME TO MESS UP A CLEAN CHANGE OF CLOTHES.

DAVE OUT AT TARK PRAIRIE———-

SOUNDS TO ME LIKE THAT WHAT YOU WAS MISSING WAS A GOOD DOG TO SPEAK TO THAT THERE COON.

MICHAEL D.——————–

CHECK OUT THEM GOLDEN POLISH AND THE BUFF LANCED POLISH. AND THE BLUE COCHINS AND THE PHOENIX WITH IT’S TWENTY (20′) FOOT LONG TAIL FETHERS.

AND THE SEBASTOPOL GEESE ARE SO RARE THAT THEY WILL NOT SELL ANY UNTIL NEXT YEAR. AND IF YOU LIKE TO EAT CHICKENS GET SOME BLACK GIANTS WHICH GET OVER 12 POUNDS. AND AS FOR LOOKS, THERE IS THE B.B. OLD ENGLISH GAME BANTAMS WHICH ONLY GET UP TO 24 OUNCES.